The Church of England couldn’t hope for a better enemy than Richard Dawkins. Puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant, he displays exactly the character traits that could do with some Christian mellowing. In fact, he’s almost an advertisement against atheism. You can’t help thinking that a few Sundays in the pews and the odd day volunteering in a Church-run soup kitchen might do him the power of good.

That’s some professional journalism, wouldn’t you say? Informative, accurate, well-documented, carefully verified, reasoned, impartial – everything you expect of a quality newspaper. It’s great to have journalists telling us exactly how much they hate hate hate this one public figure instead of frittering away their talents on actually saying something of substance. I look forward to the day when journalists start telling us about this kid who pissed them off in the third grade.

And by the way I can very easily help thinking that a few Sundays in the pews and the odd day volunteering in a Church-run soup kitchen might do him the power of good. What I really can’t help thinking is that Mary Ann Sieghart is a shameless slanderous hack who ought to be demoted to covering dog shows.

And that’s not a lazy cliché

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha – that’s a good one.

And that’s not a lazy cliché; for the power of good is what the Church in this country exemplifies. It’s by no means true of all religions at all times – far from it – but here and now we are extraordinarily lucky to have the established Church we have. The Church of England is broadly charitable, open, welcoming, tolerant, compassionate and undogmatic.

Only up to a point – and only because it is so comparatively powerless. It’s that, to the extent that it is, only because it has been forced to be – by secularism and by secular influences, mostly.

But it still has its bishops in the House of Lords. That’s still a little sliver of theocracy; it’s still a bad arrangement.

The great thing about the Church of England is that it couldn’t be less militant. If anything, people criticise it for being too meek and mild. Personally I prefer a Church that is forgiving and undogmatic…

Really? Then why the row of personally insulting labels at the beginning of the piece?

“Gently and assuredly”, said the Queen, the Church has created such an environment in this country. I like those adverbs.

What’s going on is that the courts in the UK ruled that opening an official meeting with prayer was against the law, and the RDF released the results of a poll saying that Christians in the UK aren’t really very observant and are more cultural Christians than they are believers.

These twin events have stirred up the pot. And Dawkins is a convenient target for angry religious people who don’t want to face up to the fact that their religious beliefs aren’t REALLY shared by the bulk of the population.

Moderate religious folks can have a live and let live attitude with atheism as long as they can continue to believe that the moderate religious folks are the “normal” ones and that the atheists are the “abnormal” ones. But as soon as there’s a small bit of evidence that maybe, just maybe, they’re the ones with the “weird” beliefs and the atheists have beliefs that are actually closer to “normal” for the population, they start to get skittish.

I have been the first to point out that RD can sometimes be less than ideal as a spokesperson for atheism, but really? No one this week has actually presented one single cogent reasoned argument against the results of the Mori poll his foundation commissioned. If anything says he has won this particular round, this ad hominem drivel definitely does.

Back when she worked for the Times, Sieghart was renowned for her self-regarding pieces about the wonderfully fulfilled life she led, and her extraordinarily gifted children – to the extent that she regularly featured in Private Eye as “Mary Anne Bighead”, with her ghastly daughters Brainella and Intelligencia. Very cruel it was – I almost felt sorry for her.